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Here’s why I’m running for the Glendale Unified Board of Education:
- I will be your advocate for our District D schools and neighborhoods. The GUSD’s new voting districts have changed the School Board Member’s role; indeed, I may be the only candidate running for this new job: Your board member is now the point person for your home district. As a member of the first-ever board with geographical representation, I will make sure our District D schools get our fair share of the millions of dollars of bond money spent by the GUSD every year to support new construction, teachers, students and staff. As I talk with the teachers, principals, parents and community members of our district, I’m asking the question that is central to our new era of neighborhood representation: What can the school board do for you?
- As a homeowner and a GUSD parent, I want our District D schools such as Glenoaks, Mann, Marshall, Muir and Glendale High to be stronger than ever – for all of our students. Put simply, great schools make great neighborhoods, and I will be a pragmatic, progressive voice on the School Board who will find common ground among neighbors and neighborhoods, and I will make the case that our public schools are strongest when they represent and support all students, and reflect the diversity that makes Glendale such a unique and wonderful place to live. I will put my community-organizing skills to work to ensure equity for the students, families and residents of my home district — including recent immigrants, and those minority populations who may have been under-served by the former at-large system. This does not mean that I will be looking to get District D schools a disproportionate amount of GUSD resources: rather, it means that for the first time in our City’s history, someone will be scrutinizing budgets and speaking up at meetings on behalf of their own community. As the mother of a biracial child who is also an immigrant, and as a School Board Member, I will make sure that all families feel welcome in the GUSD, and that we have the funds to provide all of Glendale’s children the excellent education they deserve.
- More language immersion + more magnets + lower classroom size = a stronger financial foundation for the GUSD. The GUSD is facing a looming budget challenge: While enrollment is up at the elementary level, the District is still losing families to charters, privates and other school systems as their children hit middle and high school. We need to find a way, right now, to keep those families in the GUSD. My plan to turn this financial liability around includes:
- More Language Immersion: As a GUSD parent whose fifth-grade son currently studies Korean at Mark Keppel, I know language-immersion is a calling card for the District. It’s keeping families in the GUSD, and it’s bringing children–and their Average Daily Attendance funding–to the GUSD. As a School Board member, I will promote our innovative, district-run language-immersion programs, and work to see all of our language programs mature into the middle- and high-school years.
- More Arts and Magnets: As your Board member, one my first goals will be to establish a middle-school magnet for the Arts. As President of the parent-run foundation at Mark Keppel, I led an effort to raise $85,000 to fund the school’s arts teachers. As a community member, I’ve been wowed by the students of District D’s Glendale High in action on the stage, and I want to see their Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) academy gain even more renown. I’m also excited about the focused magnet curriculum offered at Edison and Franklin elementaries, Clark High School, and Keppel. Arts put the “A” in STEAM education, and magnets attract and keep families in our district schools. We need more of both.
- More promotion of what GUSD has to offer: As a GUSD parent, I know what it’s like to see your child’s friends peel off to go to charters for 6th- and 7th-grade and beyond, and to see no one from the GUSD making a pitch for them to stay. As a School Board Member, the first thing I will do is become that person. No family leaves the GUSD without knowing about all the wonderful offerings our world-class school system has to offer their child.
- Smaller class sizes: This this perhaps the most important — and financially challenging — part of the equation: In order for the GUSD to remain competitive in attracting and retaining families, we must make reducing classroom size a priority at the elementary and secondary schools. I can’t do this as a lone School Board member, and it takes community will to make the hard choices that result in lower class sizes. But if we want it, we need to start talking about it — and I intend to be the one to start that conversation.
- I will bring my experience as a GUSD parent, and a working mother, to the GUSD Board Room.
- It’s not my status as a school parent that makes me qualified — it’s my experience: My years of experience within the GUSD, seeing first-hand its successes and its challenges, has given me a hard-won perspective that I will bring to the School Board. I know what it’s like to be up against a work deadline, juggling sports schedules, homework, dinner prep and a lice notice that comes home in a backpack. I know what it’s like to raise tens of thousands of dollars for a school foundation, and to work to get students the resources that that money can buy; and I know exactly what it means when I see a school in my district that doesn’t have a functional PTA, and therefore isn’t taking advantage of the most basic tools to advocate for itself before the Board.
- I’m a journalist by trade, which means I am both a professional communicator, and a professional listener. Both skills will serve me well on the School Board. Sometimes — in fact, most of the time — listening is as important as speaking. Some politicians seem to forget that. I won’t.
- I will be vigilant about charter schools. The nationwide charter-school movement is coming to Glendale, and the GUSD needs to be smart about how it navigates this critical time.
- I support my friends, neighbors and parent-supporters whose own children proudly attend charter schools outside of the GUSD. I love that they love their schools; I love that their schools work. Good-idea charter schools fill gaps and spark innovation in school systems that can’t meet all students’ needs. But bad-idea charters are those that neither serve critical needs, nor have viable plans for success. The first charter school due to open within GUSD is a bad-idea charter: the International Studies Language Academy (ISLA) is a copycat of our GUSD language-immersion programs, and was rejected by the Glendale school board and found “unsound” by the Los Angeles County Office of Education before being rubber-stamped and forced onto the GUSD by the state.
- As a GUSD Board member, I will always be open to good ideas, but I will be aware of the issues that the Los Angeles Unified School District failed to address at the start of its own charter wave: lack of transparency, reliance on less-experienced teachers and “dumping” of low-scoring or disabled students.
- I will also use my voice as an elected official to call for change in our state’s charter-approval process and co-location law, and I will never take a penny from the California Charter School Association, or any other charter-lobbying groups. My vote is not for sale.
- I vow to resist the DeVos agenda of school vouchers and privatization. The threat of a new national policy to privatize public schools is something the GUSD must prepare for, right now: As a School Board member, I will ask the GUSD to prepare a plan for a steep reduction or even elimination of the Title I funds we receive from the Federal Government, which pay for a whole host of services in our schools. Burying our heads in the sand and hoping for the best will not work; holding a “what if” discussion now, before any hard times come, is the wise thing to do.
- I will continue to be committed to keeping our schools safe. As a founder of the Coalition for a Better Glendale, I fought to ban gun shows from the publicly owned, school-adjacent Glendale Civic Auditorium. Formed in the wake of the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, our grassroots coalition brought together community members to make our neighborhoods and schools safer for all.
- I will take a holistic approach to high-tech. Technology at the GUSD should not just be about hardware. New computers, tablets and Smart Boards have become a budget-busting obsession in some school districts. If the GUSD can afford them — great. But we must focus on giving students the life skills they need to thrive in a world where tech touches every aspect of their lives — and where the hardware changes and improves exponentially, every year. Here is the foundation of my Tech platform for the GUSD:
- Coding for all. Coding needs to be a universal element throughout the GUSD’s K-12 system. It should be treated as a second language that all students can and should learn — regardless of the language spoken at home. It’s especially important at the Career Technical Education (CTE) level. At minimum, after-school classes in coding should be available at all four CTE high-school campuses in the GUSD.
- Online literacy. Today more than ever, we need critical thinkers–and critically thinking Internet users. Fact-based education must extend beyond the classroom to the river of information that flows from the devices in our students’ pockets and backpacks. I support bills AB-155 and SB-135, which call for new California state curriculum standards on media literacy.
- I will help connect GUSD’s PTAs and parent-run school foundations.
- When a school has an active PTA or PTSA, it has a voice in decision-making at the School Board level and beyond. State and local PTA councils provide organizational and advocacy tools that all District D schools should take advantage of, and I will be in our schools to make sure that all of District D’s parents know about them: From bond money to ballot measures, the unified voice of a PTA makes a difference when it comes to equity.
- Unlike PTAs, which are linked by central leadership and organization, school foundations are independent endeavors: I also see great value in providing our school foundations with a platform to share ideas about fundraising and community-building events, and as District D’s School Board member, I can provide online and real-world resources and events to make this happen.
- I will oppose the expansion of Scholl Canyon Landfill, and oppose any extension of its closing date. Scholl Canyon is located just up the road from Glenoaks Elementary, one of our stellar District D schools, as well as Glenoaks Park and the Scholl Canyon ball fields. The landfill is already a risk factor for lung damage for young children, and expanding it is not only unnecessary, but potentially dangerous.
- As an elected official in Glendale, I will call on the City Council to choose the “No Project Alternative” when the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Scholl Canyon Expansion Plan comes up for a vote — the only choice in the EIR that guarantees the dump will not be expanded or extended beyond its natural closing date, which is likely many decades in the future — and could be extended even longer due to Glendale’s existing Zero-Waste policy.
- I will listen to those who want to see more summer–and less school–in the month of August. The recently approved GUSD calendar for the 2017-2018 school year established Aug. 16 as the first day of school, eight days later than this year’s Aug. 8. This is a step in the right direction. But I feel for the parent-petitioners who believe their input wasn’t sufficiently heeded, and I hear my neighbors who tell me the new calendar isn’t mindful enough of families. The calendars for 2018-2019 and beyond are still in play; now’s the time to find more summer vacation time.
- I will oppose severing the Sagebrush neighborhood from the GUSD. A mass transfer would be too disruptive for students and too costly for our schools. And in the event of a Sagebrush departure, all remaining GUSD residents would be on the hook for higher tax obligations due to existing bonds approved when Sagebrush was part of the district.
- I will improve the CUSD’s career technical education (CTE) programs.
- The GUSD must ensure equity of both resources and focus among the four CTE campuses: Clark, CV, Glendale High and Hoover. While the idea that each campus has its own focus, and thus its own calling card, is commendable, in practice the reality is that CV’s programs are off-limits to everyone but residents of Northern Glendale. (Because of CV’s strong enrollment, there are few opportunities for intra-district permits.)
- With healthcare jobs projected to be the fastest-growing careers in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale metro area through 2024, all GUSD students must be able to access the training and education opportunities afforded by CV’s Academy of Science and Medicine: Biotech, for instance, cannot just be an after-school CTE class, located only at CV High. This isn’t just about equity, it’s about being smart and forward-thinking, and getting the largest number of students ready for the fields with the most jobs.
- As a School Board Member, I will promote our CTE programs as district-wide programs that everyone should consider, no matter where they live. Glendale High’s CTE programs should not just be known to Glendale High families, Hoover’s to Hoover’s and so on: We should strive to find the right programs to fit our students. If a student who lives in the Montrose area is best-served by the construction program offered at Glendale High, then we need to make sure she knows about the opportunity, and that she gets to take advantage of it.[6]
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Shant Sahakian 
